XCP-ng 8.0.0 Release Candidate

axel

Hello

now it looks like 8.0 will be ready soon. I like to write a article for a big german IT magazin

stormi

We plan to release in the next few day, and there have been important changes that need testing before that:

the updater XAPI plugin, that handles patch detection and application (through yum) and is used by Xen Orchestra in the pool and hosts views, has been vastly modified to prevent it from running multiple times concurrently (in extreme cases, this could crash your host due to lack of available RAM)
updated kernel for http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-300.html
EPEL repos added by default, in disabled state http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-300.html

Testers who already run XCP-ng 8.0 beta/RC

To test this, I suggest to:

Update the XAPI plugins only, so that you can test the updater plugin: yum update xcp-ng-xapi-plugins
Update your hosts with Xen Orchestra (if you don't use Xen Orchestra, then you won't be able to test the updater plugin... then just run yum update on your hosts).
Restart the XAPI toolstack (xe-toolstack restart) on your hosts, starting with the pool master.
Reboot your hosts, starting with the pool master as usual, so that the kernel security fix is applied and you can test that everything works well with the updated kernel.

Testers who could test the "final" installation ISO

I'll also make pre-release ISOs available to those who want to test them before the final release (we need as many tests as we can get in this final stage). Unless there's an important bug that is found during the tests, the pre-release ISOs and the final ISOs should be identical.

stormi

The "prefinal" ISO images are available there:

The net-install online repository has been updated too.

axel

Hello stormi

Thx for your info i will try your pre release next few days

ajmind

Upgrade from XCP-NG 7.6 > 8.0.0 with prefinal .iso went smooth without any problem on a single host. Host system quite old Intel System S5520UR with dual XEON E5645 and 48GB RAM.

Just a quick note: Old Windows XP VM does not boot anymore with XenTools 6.5 or 7.3 installed. When removed in safe mode the VM can be started... On XCP-NG 7.6 this was not the case. VM has booted also with XenTools 6.5.

janvs0

Upgrade from Citrix XenServer 6.5 > Citrix XenServer 7.6 > XCP-ng 8.0.0 with prefinal .iso went smooth without any problem on a 3 box pool. Moved to the "new" partition scheme from XS6.5 -> XS7.6 and used the prepare_host_upgrade.py (rolling pool) method. Had no issues migrating the existing VM's upward.

Perhaps it would've been possible to go from XS6.5 straight to XCP-ng 8.0.0 (after applying hotfix RPU002) but since this is a production cluster I didn't want to make it too risky (yes, I know this is not quite final yet).

//edit: Forgot to mention these are Dell PowerEdge R720s on Intel E5 2660's using FC storage.

Thanks XCP-ng team!

mike

Quick (hopefully not dumb) question: Will XCP-ng 8.0 support VDIs larger than 2TB? I see mention of the qcow2 format dotted around but nothing concrete about if/when it will be implemented. Cheers.

olivierlambert

I wouldn't consider SMAPIv3 production ready yet. Our first objective would be exporting qcow2 files to be able to backup those (so if you have an issue, at least you have backups!)

Surprisingly (or not ) Citrix didn't planned any way to export VM disk in the format they chose themselves (qcow2)

So now @ronan-a is working on integrating that into SMAPIv3. As soon it's done (a PoC should be around this summer), we'll try to publish various "drivers" (ZFS, ext4, xfs, NFS) for people who want to experiment, with also a PoC in Xen Orchestra to be able to "save"/backup those QCOW2 files.

mike

@olivierlambert Thanks for the super-quick reply as usual! I feel like I should make a new thread for it, but what are you views on using raw VDIs to get around the limit? http://www.ervik.as/how-to-create-a-raw-logical-volume-manager-virtual-disk-infrastructure-with-xenserver/

I realise you can't snapshot raw disks, but are there any other pitfalls to it?

olivierlambert

Doing hat is like plugin a disk directly to the VM, you'll lose all virtualization flexibility:

no snapshot
no backup
no migration

So do that in last resort, if you can't avoid a 2TiB disk or you can't afford a NAS.

Hans

This post is deleted!

Hans

@ajmind Did you get the Windows XP up and running with any XenTools? I was able to live migrate from 7.2 to 8.0 with XP still running, but it wont boot after shutdown.

ajmind

@Hans
No, it was not successful, except to boot the VM in safe mode and to remove the Xentools and drivers via the Software Control Panel. However, this has left the VM unusable and the activation was also lost.

ruskofd

I think there is typo concerning UEFI. It seems only available for Windows guest only.

From Citrix :

olivierlambert

You don't have this limitation in Xen Orchestra. I suppose Citrix didn't test it for other distro, but I'm running Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu on it without issues.

Again, I would recommend XO as main client for XCP-ng

ruskofd

Oh nice ! I didn't tested it that's why, glad to hear that !
I use XO only too, but for fresh setup installation, I use XCP-ng Center (for XO from sources).

borzel

anyone can request a change in https://github.com/xcp-ng/xenadmin/issues